


Once Upon a Time - The Saviour Princess Bride

by ilerya82



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CS Secret Santa, F/M, The Princess Bride - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 14:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2854094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilerya82/pseuds/ilerya82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Canon Divergence/Alternate Universe Fic - Told like The Princess Bride.  Relive some of Emma and Killian's best moments together and live what I think would be their future best, since we didn't get anything in the Mid Season Finale, but I think we should have gotten something...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time - The Saviour Princess Bride

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my CS Secret Santa on tumblr, killihan-jones, and is probably one of the most ambitious things that I have decided to write and hopefully will be one of the better presents that I could offer. Because you loved the Princess Bride references as much as I did, this one is for you my dear and it pretty much is writing itself! :)
> 
> I promise to be finished writing this and posting it by the time the kids go back to school on January 5th as it's all very well mapped out and pretty much written, but it needed to be more than just a one shot! Part One today... Part Two (*which is very much Season Two moments) comes Saturday... and probably every two days, or less, until it is all posted. 
> 
> Merry Christmas (or Happy Whatever you are Celebrating) to you ALL!

The coughing came in waves, shaking his little body to the core.  He hated being sick, being cooped up inside all day unable to run an play with his friends outside, it was boring!  It didn’t matter that his mother had moved the TV and the Xbox into the bedroom, and though he did enjoy missing school, it wasn’t exactly the way he wanted it to happen.  He missed _people_.  Besides, it wasn’t easy to defeat bosses when you could suddenly be stricken with a hack attack in the process causing you to have to pause and lose your rhythm. 

As he paused again, another coughing fit claiming his body, his mother puttered in to the bedroom placing a glass of water on the bedside table and a cool hand on his forehead.  The fever was almost gone, he knew, but his mother had to go to work and that meant that she would be leaving soon.  He wondered who his sitter would be today. 

Yesterday, it had been his Aunt Grace and they’d spent the day eating ice cream, banana flavored popsicles and watching his favourite superhero movies.  The day before his father had stayed with him and he had helped him beat the latest epic installment of the Dragon Age Saga, taking as many coughing breaks as needed.  He liked that he had the chance to spend the time with his father, it was rare that he could get away from his duties, but his schedule was still more flexible than his mother’s and that was a blessing, he guessed. 

“Guess who’s going to spend the day with you today, pumpkin,” his mother whispered as she leaned over and gently kissed his forehead.  She ruffled his hair a little, something he always detested when he was healthy but when he was sick he couldn’t get enough of.  He kind of thought she used that to her advantage, not that she enjoyed him being sick but that she enjoyed that he let her. 

“Umm,” the cough was a congested barking that took any and every opportunity to creep in to his horse, croaking voice.  He shrugged his shoulders as another fit took hold.  He really, really hated being sick. 

“Your Grandfather is here,” she said with a smile.  There was a twinkle to her eyes, which could only mean one thing.  It was _that_ grandfather.  Not the one from his father’s side of the family, it was her father that had come to visit. 

“Mom, can’t you tell him I’m sick?”

(Really, because that would make perfect sense.) 

He’s sick, his parents have to work, and he needs a babysitter because he’s only eight and can’t really do much of anything by himself, not that he was going to do anything but continue trying to beat this level anyways, but…

“You’re sick?   _Nooo_ ,” she rolled her eyes and smiled, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she sat on the bed beside him, smoothing his hair back from his face.  “That’s why he’s here.”

“He’ll pinch my cheek, you know I hate that!”

“Maybe he won’t, you never know….” 

His mother kissed him again, rising to cross to the window, throwing open the curtains to let the sun stream in.  It was blinding.  Just because the sun was shining and he wanted to be outside with his friends didn’t mean he really wanted to see the sun and be reminded that he couldn’t. 

The door opened to his room and in waltzed his grandfather, dressed in black and clutching a black leather satchel to his chest.  Jackson shot his mother an accusatory glare as his grandfather sauntered over to his bedside and pinched his cheek.  She tried not to laugh, but it wasn’t working very well. 

“Hey!  How’s the sickie, eh?”

The older man settled himself in a chair beside the bed, and Jackson couldn’t help but roll his eyes as he made a production out of the event.  He wasn’t that old, his grandfather.  Not nearly as old his father’s father, or at least not in his estimation.  He certainly didn’t look all that old, but the way he groaned as he sat you would think he was ancient.   

“I think that’s my cue to go.  Thanks again, Papa,” she chuckled.  She kissed her father’s cheek as she headed for the door, a twinkle in her eye as she turned on the way out to take them in again.  “Have fun you two!”

Jackson heard the clack of her heels on the hallway floor, counting the steps until he heard the door close and latch behind her.  And then it was just the two of them. 

“Well, lad, I’ve brought you a special present,” his grandfather was pulling a leather bound book from the inside of the satchel, and laying it on his lap.  The brown leather weathered and aged, with gold leafed writing on the cover.  It looked like a book he had seen before, almost like the one that his Uncle had read to them at the cottage last year.  He loved those fairy tales, but he would never admit it aloud, that just wouldn’t be cool. 

“What is it?”

“Well, what does it look like?”

“A book?”

“That’s right, it’s a book.  When I was your age… Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” a wry smile on his lips, his grandfather lifted the book and began flipping through the pages reverently.  “This isn’t just a book though, my boy, it’s a very _very_ special book.  I used to read this book to your mother when she was younger, and today…  Well, today lad, I’m going to read it to you.”

_Oh heavens!_ Apparently, he was going to be napping most of the day.  That or he was going to die of boredom!  He would be begging his mother to go back to school, sick or not, he was sure!

“Does it have any action in it?”

 Jackson had to hope that this wasn’t some sort of boring lecture book.  He was hoping that there was some kind of adventure, otherwise he’s be asleep in no time knowing the nautical and shipyard books his grandfather like to read.  But, if he’d read it to his mother…

“Are you kidding?  Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, True Love, miracles...”

“Doesn’t sound _too_ bad, I guess,” Jackson shrugged, fingering the buttons on the remote control to shut down his Xbox properly and save his progress, “I guess I can _try_ to stay awake for it…”

“Oh, well thank you very much lad.  That’s very kind of you.”  His grandfather was riffling around inside the satchel, at last finding the case for his reading glasses and pulling them out of the bag.  “Your vote of confidence is absolutely overwhelming!”

He slid the glasses on to his nose, settled the book in his lap and peered over the frames to see if his captive audience was ready for the adventure ahead.  Jackson, by and large, was not but he flicked off the TV and gave his grandfather his whole attention. 

“Alright lad, let’s begin… Once Upon a Time, Chapter One.  _Emma had been raised in a far off land, not knowing her parents and family for many, many years._

_She’d grown up in the foster care system, being transferred from homes to group homes, throughout most of her youth, never having a permanent place to call her own.  She hadn’t always been meant for this kind of life, and though she was good at surviving through all the trials and hardships the land had placed on her, she couldn’t help but wonder if one day she would find a family to love her and call her very own._

_All of that changed on her twenty-eighth birthday, when her past came back to find her and bring her to her home and family she had dreamt of for so long in the form a young boy she had placed for adoption a little more than ten years prior.  He had found his mother, the woman who was meant to be the Saviour and he would bring her to her parents, to a real home and family, to love, and all she had to do was believe._

“So wait a minute, you mean she had a happily ever after even before the story starts?”

“Does that sound like happily ever after, lad?”

Jackson had to ponder that a minute.  Not really, no, but it sounded a lot like it _could be_ a happily ever after.  It wouldn’t really be much of story if it was, he supposed. 

“No, I guess not.”

“Shall I continue?”

“Ok…”

_“Emma wasn’t one to believe in fairy tales.  She didn’t believe in happily ever after, or love at first sight.  Frankly, she didn’t really believe in love nor did she trust in it.  The only person she trusted in was herself, because life was hard here in this world and the only person she had ever truly been able to count on was herself._

_She’d been living in Boston for the past couple of years, floating around as a bail bondsperson and today was her twenty eighth birthday.  Her twenty-eighth year spent alone, taking down a dead beat who skipped bail and didn’t care what was happening to the woman and children he had defaulted on.  After he’d been taken back in cuffs by the local law enforcement, Emma found herself back inside the restaurant ordering a vanilla cupcake, just a little something to remind her that it had been another year and she was still alive.  She was still surviving._

_Sure she was alone, but she had always been alone so that was nothing new.  If she didn’t celebrate her birthday, no matter how small of a celebration it would just pass like any other day.  There was something about that that didn’t sit well with her either.  Thankfully she wasn’t far from home and an end to this day._

_She was through the door to the building and almost at the elevator control panel when she noticed the out of order sign._

_“Great… Just great,” she muttered as she trudged towards the stairwell.  It didn’t matter that it was her birthday, it was just another day.  It went unnoticed by the majority of the world, and she didn’t really have any friends or colleagues that she shared it with.  The most she may have would be renewing her license at the DMV, but it wasn’t the year for that this go-round._

_Ten flights of stairs, and two aching feet later, Emma finds herself fumbling at the front door of her apartment for her keys.  A Spartan space, not much in the way of colour (or items of furniture – or personal mementos) but it’s home, and she’s wishing for the first time that it was closer to the ground floor.  The key slides in the lock, turns, and she’s inside.  Her back pressed against the door to close it, a heavy sigh falling from her lips as she kicks off the killer stiletto heels that had looked so beautiful with the dress but were murder on her feet, almost rolling her ankle in the process._

_It really is just another day, she kept thinking as she took her prized cupcake from the take out bag and routed through the kitchen junk drawer for a candle.  A single, solitary candle with a star on top to make her wish with, not that she believed in the power of wishes but it was her birthday and dammit if she wasn’t going to try just one more time.  She found the lighter faster than she had thought she would and lit the wick, crouching down and leaning against her crossed arms at eye level with the flame._

_“Another banner year…”_

_She closed her eyes to make her wish, just like she had seen in all those feel good movies that she had occasionally indulged in during her moments of self-pity over the years.  The thought that she had kept buried for years surfacing in her wish.  There was only so much alone one person could take, and Emma was at the end of her leash.  No matter all the hurt, she didn’t want to be alone any more._

_No sooner had she blown out the candle then there was a knock at her door.  She had wondered who it was, she certainly wasn’t expecting anyone.  She didn’t know any of her neighbours, and there wasn’t a soul in the world who knew her well enough to know that this was her birthday.  That’s what happened when you grew up in the bad homes in the system, when you never found your forever home.  You had no family and no one to care about you, or whether you spent your birthday all alone._

_She opened the door, and when faced with no one at eye level, she looked down on the face of a young boy.  A mop of dark hair masking dark eyes, but a face that felt familiar._

_“Uh?  Can I help you?”_

_“Are you Emma Swan?”  He was young, nine maybe ten.  She didn’t know anyone, didn’t have any family…_

_“Yeah, who are you?”_

_“My name is Henry.  I’m your son.”_

“Wait a minute!  Wait just – a – minute!”

“What is it, lad?”

“His name is Henry?”

“Yes,” his grandfather smiled somewhat cryptically, this was a story that Jackson knew.  He knew how his Uncle Henry had been adopted.  He knew that he had gone to find his birth mother, Jackson’s grandmother, on her twenty-eighth birthday.  What possible story could his grandfather be telling that involved giants and pirates that had to do with his grandmother???

“This is Grandma’s story…  So how can this story have _any_ of those things, Grandpa?”

“You’ll have to hear the story to find out for sure.  Shall I continue?”

“Do we have to hear more about Uncle Henry finding Grandma?”

“There’s not much more, lad, you’ll see.”

 

_He pushed past her into the apartment and Emma felt as though the world had come crashing down upon her.  He’s made his way to the centre island in the kitchen and taken a seat on the bar stool on the end.  This was too much, too wild and too crazed.  He couldn’t be…_

_“_ _Whoa!  Hey, kid!  Kid!  Kid!  I don’t have a son!  Where are your parents?”_

_“Ten years ago… Did you give a baby up for adoption?  That was me,” Henry rolled his eyes a little as though this wasn’t a big deal.  It was a big deal.  It was a HUGE deal!_

_“Give… give me a minute…” Emma padded to the bathroom, pressing her back against the locked door, her hands shaking from the complete shock.  No wonder the face had been so familiar.  His eyes, his face…_

_She stood before the mirror, wanting to pinch herself to know that this was not simply a nightmare. That the baby boy she had wanted so badly, but known she could not care for the way he deserved, was in her kitchen.  It was supposed to be a closed adoption.  How had he even found her????_

_“Hey!  You have any juice?”_

_She heard him call from the kitchen, the sound muffled by the door.  She should probably go back out there, but this was a little too much.  She had wished that she was not alone and suddenly he was here.  It was all a little surreal, to come face to face with a moment from the past that she had tried so desperately to bury deep inside._

_“Never mind.  Found some.”_

_She took a deep breath and pulled open the door.  Her body moved sluggishly, as if on auto pilot, her feet carrying her back into the kitchen where Henry sat drinking the pilfered juice directly from the carton.  This couldn’t be real!_

_“You know, we should probably get going,” he said after taking another gulp of the liquid._

_“Going where?”_

_“I want you to come home with me.”_

_What?  Was he serious?  She’d given him up for adoption for a reason.  Her life was not one that was conducive to raising a child, and even if it was, she wasn’t the type to be a mother.  At least, she didn’t think she was.  And why on Earth would she want to go back with him to his family, his forever home, when she knew they would think that she was trying to cause problems for them.  She was in no position to parent a child._

_“Okay, kid.  I’m calling the cops.”_

_She turned her body towards the phone that rested on the table by the window._

_“Then I’ll tell them you kidnapped me.”_

_He had an answer for everything.  It was a pretty good reason, he had really thought about this and how she might react to every situation.  Smart kid._

_“And they’ll believe you, because I’m your birth mother.”_

_“Yup.”_

_“You’re not going to do that.”_

_“Try me,” his voice challenged, but his eyes and his mannerisms said something different.  He was lying.  He wouldn’t dare, but he did want her for something and she couldn’t quite put her finger on what._

_“You’re pretty good, but here’s the thing – there’s not a lot I’m great at in life…  I have one skill.  Let’s call it a superpower,” Emma said smugly, “I can tell when anyone is lying and you, kid, are.”_

_“Wait!”_

_That got him, she thought as she heard the panic in his voice.  There was something going on, she couldn’t put her finger on it but something just wasn’t right._

_“Please don’t call the cops.  Please… Come home with me?”_

_“Where’s home?”_

_“Storybrooke, Maine.”_

_“Storybrooke?  Seriously?”_

_“Mmmhmmmm.”_

_“Alrighty, then.  Let’s get you back to Storybrooke.”_

_She had given him up for adoption to give him his best chance for a happy life, but there was something about his face and his manner that was off.  If it was because she was looking at what she imagined a young Neal would have looked like, she couldn’t be sure, but there was something that meant she needed to find out what it was.  She may not be in a position to be his mother, but she would be damned if she knew that things were not right in his adoptive home where he should be loved and safe.  She’d grown up without that kind of love, in the torture of a merry go round of foster homes where she wasn’t loved unconditionally to know that she didn’t want him, or any child for that matter, to suffer the same fate._

_She was going to Storybrooke and she was going to make sure that he was ok.  She’d worry about what would happen later if he wasn’t, but for now, she was going to find out._

_He’d woven quite a tale on the drive back.  Fairy tale characters living in a cursed town that no one had really ever heard of, in which time stood still and nothing ever changed.  Where his mother, his adoptive mother, was the mayor (whom he believed to be the Evil Queen of the story, the one who had cursed them all in the first place because she was sick of not having her own happy ending and thought stealing everyone else’s would make it all better) and could (and would) make her life and her interest in getting to know her son and making sure he was ok a living hell._

_It was quite the tale, and he even challenged her superpower to find a lie in what he was saying, but for the first time she faltered.  None of it made sense, it sounded like the ramblings of an overactive imagination.  Or a kid strung out on a candy high, but that was neither here nor there.  He believed what he was saying, and so that made her wonder what was happening in his life to make him believe that fairy tales were better than reality._

_He wanted her to break the curse.  She was destined, according to his story book, as the Saviour and the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, to break the curse that was held on the town and return all of the happy endings.   She was the only one, but if his mother found out that they were still working on the curse, it could spell certain doom for both of them._

_The few run ins she had had with Regina Mills, Madame Mayor extraordinaire, had proven to be very adversarial.  Emma could almost believe that she was the Evil Queen in these stories, so she’d done what she had thought was best.  The final pages of the story book, the pages that proclaimed that Emma would grow up and break the curse were ripped from the book and burned in the fireplace in Archie’s office.  The therapist even seemed to agree that Emma was doing the best thing for Henry.  If it had to be a secret, they would need a code name, and Henry was the one to come up with it._

_They’d called it Operation Cobra, and though Emma hadn’t wanted to believe it, in the end it was the poisoned apple turnover that convinced her he was telling the truth.  Storybrooke, Maine was home to countless fairy tale (yes, fairy tale) characters who had been cursed by the Evil Queen into losing their happy endings.  She’d even been living with her own mother throughout the whole ordeal.  August had tried to tell her it was so, but she couldn’t see past her anger at the little boy who hadn’t wanted to stay and protect her when she was just a baby in this world.  She hadn’t believed them until it was almost too late and the turnover that had been meant to curse her had instead been eaten by her son._

_He looked so frail in that hospital bed, strapped to monitors and machines.  He was so pale, deathly pale, and it was breaking inside her.  She knew the moment Regina entered the room that she was to blame.  The curse was real.  It was all real, and if that was the case, Emma had no choice but to be the Saviour that her son needed her to be._

_They’d fought it out, but finally agreeing that the only way that Henry could possibly survive the curse would be to seek out the help of Rumpelstiltskin, better known as Mr. Gold in this realm, and find a way to break it.  He sent them on an errand, to retrieve a vial of true love, the only thing powerful enough to break any curse, from something that seemed almost impossible to Emma – the belly of a dragon.  What was worse was that Regina was harbouring this dragon right underneath the town, the particular curse that she had chosen for her former friend when they had travelled to the land without magic was to curse her in her dragon form and imprison her beneath the town library.  Maleficent was not amused by this, and so it was that Emma, her father’s sword in hand, rode the little elevator to the darkest depths of the town with Regina operating the controls on the ground level out of fear of retribution from her former friend._

_She defeated the dragon, but only after abandoning all thoughts of her the weapons of this world working – because really the gun wasn’t working and the only thing that could best her was the sword, because that was how fairy tales worked, right?  Returning to the surface in the elevator and being double crossed by Gold – again – Emma found a bound Regina at the top of the shaft and the old man nowhere to be found._

_It was the hospital, and the news was not good._

_They arrived just in time to see them stopping work on him and removing monitor bands.  Her heart broken in to a million little pieces, her stomach falling as she wandered to his bedside.  We did all we could and I’m sorry you’re too late coming from the lips of Doctor Whale and Mother Superior like poison to her ears.  She needed to say it to her son, even if he couldn’t hear her anymore, she needed him to know that she did – and would always – love him._

_“Henry… I love you,” she whispered through the tears that threatened to turn to sobs, pressing her lips against his forehead tenderly._

_And there’s a blast of light that flows from them, a shimmering blast of magic that emanates from where her lips touched his brow that causes her to stumble back as Henry opens his eyes and gasps.  He sucked in all the air that he could, his eyes bright and his lips smiling._

_“I love you, too.  You saved me.”_

_That was the first time Emma had said those words that they had brought true light into her life.  It was the first time that the person she said it to hadn’t left her.  He was still here, he was alive, and he was hers because there was no way in hell she was letting Regina have him back right now!  She was going to take the time to get to know her son, to get to know her parents, to have a life and put down roots.  It was the first time in her life that she had genuinely wanted to settle down somewhere._


End file.
